5 Reasons Why Your Online Business Is Failing

Is your online presence failing to set the world alight? Are you struggling to attract visitors and make sales? If so, there’s a good chance you are making some – or all – of the following mistakes. Take a look at these common issues that can have a considerable impact on your website’s success – and learn how to fix them.

Poor mathematics

How’s your math? The plain and simple truth about failing businesses is that the numbers just don’t add up. Either you are spending too much money to be sustainable, or you aren’t charging enough to survive. There is a delicate balance to strike, but the sooner you nail your figures, the better your results will be. If you are struggling in this area, I suggest hiring an accountant or getting financial help. While you will pay them a fee, the benefits they will bring to your business are priceless. An accountant will reduce your tax payments, highlight areas where you can save money, and give you solid financial advice. But, most importantly, they will help you develop a plan to make you more financially resilient.

There’s no strategy

OK, so you have a website – that’s a good start. But why do you have one? What is the point of having it? And what is your plan for the next five years? A few simple thoughts about why you want to be online is all you need to start developing a strategy. It could be to give yourself a chance of making more sales. It might be to give your customers a better service, or more resources. Or, it could be to create an audience for a particular range of your products. The point is, without that clear idea of what you want, there is no way of developing a strategy to get there.

No maintenance or upgrades

If the last time you updated your site was a few years ago, it should be no surprise that you are going to fail. Web technology – and all the information you present – move forward at an incredible pace. Whether it’s updating an old blog post, so it is more current to making changes to allow for Google’s Penguin 4 update, updates are critical. Failure to keep with the times will result in a bad performance – it’s that simple.

Focus on appearance

Looking good online is a ‘nice to have’. But, more important is your website’s functionality. If people arrive on your site and find it hard to find what they are looking for, they will leave. If your site prevents them from navigating in a sensible and logical way, they will go elsewhere. And, if you invest piles of money into a fancy design without addressing user experience, your site will fail. Some of the most successful websites ever are simple, basic, and could even be called ugly. But they work – and are a success – because they are easy to use.

Hard to buy

Are you struggling with abandoned shopping carts? If so, you are in good company. Billions of dollars are left in carts over the course of a year, and there are some simple reasons why. Primarily, people want to see something and buy it as fast as possible. They don’t want to fill out countless forms or sign up for numerous other services. Make it easy for them, and you will reduce your abandoned cart rates by a significant amount.